


Acquainted with the night

by witheredsong



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Difficult Relationships, Lost Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witheredsong/pseuds/witheredsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories and midnights are all Pablo has left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquainted with the night

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving my old fic from livejournal.

He calls Roman at midnight, when the house is silent and his wife sleeps most dreamlessly, his children lost in dreams and nightmares that only children can have.

 

He knows he shouldn’t, it just makes things worse, harder to bear, but there will always be nights when he turns in his sleep and reaches to touch Roman, is rudely jolted awake to find Ana, soft curves, silky wisps of hair, serene beloved face. He will be inexplicably disappointed and feel guilty about that disappointment. He will then get up and stand in front of the window, look out on the perfect garden, the lush lawns, muted sounds of late night traffic filtering in through the walls around his home. Ivy, glossy leaves, white flowers covers the blasted tree in his backyard.

 

On some days that will calm him down and he’ll go back to sleep. On other days, the memories will come, disjointed, fragmentary, and he’ll realize he is forgetting. That’s when the ache starts getting unbearable.

 

Then he will go downstairs, quietly, blindly search for that one well-hidden DVD concealed carefully beneath his movies and music collection, and watch it on silent mode. A camera recording of the national team training, and by now, he knows every frame by heart, laughs at the antics of his younger self, wonders how he never saw, really saw how Javier looked at him, his heart laid bare in his eyes.

 

A few frames on, he knows why. Because even after watching this a few thousand times, his heart still clenches when he see that tired withdrawn face, the permanent worry lines on the forehead, and the way he watched Roman, all the time, every move, every gesture, drank him in. He wanted Roman, could see nothing but Roman, and he hadn’t known it then, even though it must have been clear to everyone but him.

 

There is that one moment, he says something, born to joke, and while others laugh, Roman smiles, draws him in, one hand over his heart, close, protective. 

 

He doesn’t know what it is, whether it is some flaw in his own memory, but he forgets. Forgets the lines around Roman’s eyes, the downturn of his lips, the sloped shoulders. He forgets how much he loves Roman, because that is a secret place of his heart he hides, and so carefully that at times he doesn’t remember it himself, because life is football and injuries, Ana and his children, warm days and transfer worries, disappointment at exclusion from the national team.

 

And then, something utterly insignificant, like the sight of fields of wheat swaying like a golden landlocked sea in the wind, will remind him of being eighteen and happy and young and Roman, and grief will shake him to the core.

 

Roman happens to him all over again, every time. He’ll face him in matches, or during those ever more infrequent national team call-ups, or even while sitting in the darkness watching a grainy recording of some long forgotten training session, and he’ll remember what it is like to gamble everything on one chance and win, what it is like to love and be loved so completely, with such desperation.

 

He’ll look, the blue light of the television monitor casting strange patterns in the room, and the desire to hear Roman’s voice will be so strong, so hurtful, that Pablo will clench his fingers to stop them from shaking. He will dial the number he swore he couldn’t remember and listen to the phone on the other side ring. Once, twice, three times, and Roman will pick up, voice soft, threaded with sleep and irritation. He says, “Hello? Who’s this?” and Pablo won’t answer. They don’t have anything to talk about any way, lives diverging, separate careers, separate paths. He just wishes to hear Roman’s voice once, so that he can bear the next few days, months, years until this strange hurt surfaces again, and he has to concentrate to bury it in the past, where it belongs.

 

He forgets that Roman remembers too, that a small sigh and Roman will know him, that Roman can recognize him by the shadow he casts. Roman says, “Pablo?” into the receiver and there’s surprise there, and tenderness. Roman always made everything too easy, even goodbyes, and Roman always makes everything too difficult because Pablo’s self-control isn’t best at night and that almost forgotten tenderness reopens old wounds. He puts down the phone quickly, breathing harsh, exhausted by sorrow.

 

He doesn’t know why this is, but this wild love of his childhood refuses let go, even when he is changed past recognition. It’s not the feeling, but how it felt, a haunting in a ruined house. Now he is never alone, never. This grief in his bones, this deception of daily life, but that’s not all there is. There is love and laughter and sons and daughters and friends, bright sun and home. There is the crowd roaring his name and those moments he can still fly with the ball at his feet. Not forsaken.

 

There are these nights.

 

So he eludes the dark omens, Payasito the clown, goes on smiling from heartache to heartache.


End file.
